"Eve," I said, "please stop for a minute. I think I finally get it. As you read to me aloud, the words become alive for me, and I can see pictures in… - Victor Villaseñor

In the last three months I hadn’t lost one single game of chess. It was crazyloco, but sometimes I thought that I was so brilliant because I could see what other people couldn’t see or understand even after I’d explain it to them. Playing chess wasn’t about making single moves. It was about seeing patterns, then backing up inside your mind and seeing the last five and six moves of your opponent, then flashing forward real fast. And bingo, the whole chessboard became alive in living patterns.

“Look,” said Jake, “last night, after you went to bed, we told your dad how we’d come across you running away from home.” “You did?” I said. “Yes, we did. It was the honest thing to do, son. And you should’ve seen the hurt look on your dad’s face, because, you see, Mexican kids don’t run away from home. White kids, gringo kids, like me and Luke, we’re the ones who run from home, but Mexicans, they ain’t never do that.

Then I saw it. Oh, my Lord God, Ramón, he was like our very own Jesus Christ. I could now see this so clearly as he walked across the school ground. He had a glowing light all about him, because he, just like Jesus, was willing to carry the cross of crucifixion for all the rest of us lesser kids.